


The Hangover

by cobwebcorner



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, getting blackout drunk is actually terrifying don't do it kids, villain sitcom, war of jokes and riddles (DC)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 01:57:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15132560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobwebcorner/pseuds/cobwebcorner
Summary: With the war between Joker and Riddler heating up to uncomfortable extremes, Bruce Wayne takes it upon himself to help negotiate a cease fire. At first, he was going to hold a dinner at his manor, but Alfred convinced him to try something different.Now Bruce has woken up in his home, deeply hungover, with precious little memory of the previous night, a chewed up cowl under his bed, and an unconscious clown in his bathtub. It's going to take some real detective work to piece this one together.And, the most burning question of all: where is the batboat?





	The Hangover

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry Batman fandom, I just can't help myself. This is pure crack and I regret nothing.
> 
> I've used the war of jokes and riddles as a jumping off point, but you don't need to have read the comic to understand because I'm ignoring most of it and smashing together whatever continuities I feel like. The characterizations are probably closest to Batman: The Animated Series, if you have to pick one.
> 
> Thanks as usual to my partner in crime, who supplied at least half of the ideas for this.

Bruce woke that morning to an army of jackhammers pounding inside of his skull. He grimaced, cotton-dry tongue curling in his mouth, and shifted one leaden arm up over his eyes. His whole body ached from his joints to his teeth. He knew a drug hangover when he felt one. Someone must have hit him with something last night—Joker toxin? Fear gas? Yet if that was the case, then he ought to be down in the medical bay of the batcave, and not—he cracked open an eye to double check—his own soft, warm bed, with sunlight peeking through the cracks in his curtains.  
  
He wouldn't get any answers by just lying around like a brick, even if sitting upright did make him want to die. He pocketed the pain, stuffed it all out of his head with the practice of years and went about cataloging his symptoms. Muscle weakness, mild nausea, sensitivity to light, pounding headache—these didn't line up with the usual toxins. Only one drug came to mind that would cause these specific side effects, and it was a much more common, less harmful substance than he had first expected: alcohol. Simple, ordinary alcohol.  
  
That hadn't happened in a very long time. Brucie Wayne might have been an irresponsible, skirt-chasing lush, but Bruce didn't let much alcohol actually pass his lips. A genuinely drunk Bruce was not fit company for a society function. What had happened last night to get him actually drinking? It wasn't the right time of year for Christmas or Thanksgiving, and his birthday was months off.  
  
He looked around for the breakfast tray Alfred always left for him whenever he was indisposed, hoping the thoughtful butler might have put some water and painkillers alongside the eggs and bacon. Today, the nightstand held no such tray, only a pair of notes. The first was written in Alfred's perfect cursive, and read,  
  
_"As you requested, I have taken a short vacation somewhere out of the rain. Do try to remember the hostages before you do anything dramatic. The aspirin is in the bathroom._  
  
_-Alfred Pennyworth"_  
  
The second seemed to have been scribbled down by himself in a great hurry.  
  
_“Reinforce cowl. Must withstand clown teeth.”_  
  
The word 'clown' alone set off alarm bells. He prodded at his cheeks, double checking for signs of extra soreness or rigidity in the facial muscles. They felt normal. He read and reread both notes several times, attempting to puzzle out their meaning and find any links between them. 'Somewhere out of the rain' sounded coded, which he absolutely did not have the mental fortitude to work out right at that moment.  
  
He could think about it after he'd gotten some aspirin. One step at a time.  
  
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, foot kicking a dark heap on the floor. It was the cowl from his batsuit. Several holes had been chewed through it, and one of the ears was missing. He turned the rubber over in his hands, eyes flicking to his note on the nightstand. Jesus Christ. Was this Joker's doing, or Harley's? He wouldn't put it past either of them.  
  
Dropping the cowl back to the floor, he shuffled over to the master bathroom, where he sagged into the door frame. While he had woken up in much worse shape before, this was one of the rare times that he didn't have to push himself. No one was going to die if he took his time this morning. He raised his head, searching out the glass medicine cabinet, and blinked.  
  
On the counter beside the sink sat a birdhouse, painted the most garish yellow Bruce had ever seen outside the circus. It had two blue wings and a propeller jutting out from its base. A plastic lion had been glued to the nose behind the propeller, and a white cross stood proudly on the house's roof.  
  
What...was that? How had it come to exist? And why was it in his bathroom? His scattered memories of the previous night offered no clues whatsoever to explain this object. Had he made that? Had the kids made that? It was almost in Dick's colors.  
  
His bathtub snored, then emitted a soft honk. Bruce froze, his eyes ticking over slowly towards the tub. Sleeping inside, head pillowed on his purple trench coat, was the answer to one of Bruce's many questions. Now he knew which clown the note had been talking about. The Joker lay curled up in a fetal position, his long, pale legs and monogrammed batman boxers bared to the air, his pants mysteriously absent. He was drooling a little on his coat and seemed well and truly dead to the world.  
  
Bruce looked at the birdhouse, and then he looked at the Joker. He looked back at the birdhouse, and then again at the Joker. After about a minute of trying and failing to make any sense of the scene before him, the world's greatest detective slowly backed out of the bathroom.  
  
He needed to call Alfred.  
  
Nothing woke a person from a stupor quite like a homicidal clown in the bathroom. Quickly and quietly, he stuffed the cowl into the back of his closet and grabbed some clothing. His heart pounded as he wriggled into his pants, ears pricked for the slightest sound from the bathroom. Now clothed and alert, he combed the room for any other evidence of his hidden identity (there was none), then grabbed his phone and slipped out into the hall.  
  
'Somewhere out of the rain,' Alfred's note had said. He must have holed himself up in the batcave. Bruce contacted it right away.  
  
“Finally elected to rejoin the land of the living, have we master Bruce?” Alfred greeted him, tone as dry as ever. Bruce relaxed against the wall, heart easing down from its thundering pace. If anything really awful had happened, Alfred would not be sounding so calm. Probably.  
  
He cast a final glance at his bedroom door, then crept off in the direction of the staircase, eager to put as much distance between himself and the sleeping clown as he could. Alfred could keep an eye on the Joker for him with the security monitors down in the cave.  
  
“Alfred. What happened last night? I can't remember a thing.”  
  
“I was afraid of that.” Alfred sighed. “I hope you at least recall the massive war between the Joker and the Riddler that has been splitting the underworld apart, of late?”  
  
“Yes.” Bruce grimaced.  
  
“When Batman failed to contain the problem, you decided it was time for Bruce Wayne to step in. I believe the plan was to negotiate a cease fire, or, failing that, gain some insight as to the real cause of the feud.”  
  
“Right. I remember. I was going to invite them all to the manor for dinner.”  
  
“Fortunately, I managed to talk you out of that. Instead, we found a nice, neutral meeting place far away from the good china. Somewhere with an activity to keep everyone's hands busy while you talked business.”  
  
They had called twenty different places before they found someone desperate enough to serve them. The high, chirpy voice of the owner came easily to mind. The place's actual name eluded him.  
  
“Where?”  
  
“The 'Quaff and Color.' It's one of those places where people have a short art lesson, drink wine, and attempt to paint something. It took us an hour of calling about to even find that one. Would you believe that most legitimate businesses don't want a mob of criminals having a tense standoff within their doors? But this one agreed, and the rogues did too, some with greater enthusiasm than others.”  
  
Bruce dug his knuckles hard into his temples and strained to remember. A few bits and pieces resurfaced through the fog in his head, like ship wreckage bobbing up through waves. The further into the evening he tried to remember, the fewer pieces he found, and the bigger the gaps of time between them.  
  
He remembered stepping out of the car onto the sidewalk, fifteen minutes early, to find both gangs already there. Kiteman and the other grunts were creeping around the alleys, checking shadows for cops or traps. Joker and Riddler, lit by the circle of a streetlamp, were standing around glaring at each other. One of them had turned to him. The next thing he remembered was the Quaff and Color’s owner greeting them at the door, her face fixed in the rictus grin of the desperate salesperson. Behind her, the painting teacher hung back, visibly fighting the urge to bolt.  
  
A voice, Killer Croc’s, bellowing: “The hell does 'quaff' mean, anyway?”  
  
And the Riddler answered immediately. “To drink in a hearty manner.” He had tipped up his hat and straightened his coat, mouth twisting sourly. “The wine had better be decent.”  
  
The quaffing had to have been the culprit. Bruce had drunk too much, too fast, and he indulged so little due to his vigilante lifestyle that his tolerance was shot.  
  
“I'm afraid I can't tell you much of what happened there,” Alfred told him, interrupting his memories. “Due to the sensitive, paranoid natures of everyone involved, we weren't able to keep up our usual level of surveillance. All I know is that you showed up here at around 5 in the morning with the Joker, both of you so staggering drunk you couldn't stand on your own. As you refused to let go of him, I had to leave the two of you in your bedroom.”  
  
Bruce recalled a flash of terror, feeling like he had just been swept off his feet by an undertow and was thrashing helplessly under a tide. Nothing he did could get his feet back under him, he couldn't control his own body anymore. In that mindless fear, he had latched on to the only close, familiar landmark he saw and dragged it with him. Apparently he had brought it home, too, and left it in his bathtub.  
  
“I would have called the police, sir, but I wasn't sure about the state of his hostages.”  
  
“Right. Right, the hostages.” Bruce blew out a sigh. It had been a condition of the meeting that the two warring leaders have some collateral to make sure the whole thing wasn't a trap. “Was I in costume when we came home?”  
  
“Mostly,” Alfred replied.  
  
Bruce winced. He prayed to whatever deity would hear him that Joker's memory would be as spotty as his own. It would be one of his worst nightmares come true if the clown prince of crime himself learned Batman's true identity.  
  
“I'm sure you understand that I had some qualms about sleeping under the same roof as that maniac. I elected to barricade myself down in the cave, instead. It also allowed me to keep an eye on the Joker from a safe distance.”  
  
“That was a smart move, Alfred. Did he get up to any mischief while I was out?”  
  
“Out like a light all night, sir,” Alfred assured him.  
  
“And the Quaff and Color? Is the place still standing?”  
  
“You can relax, master Bruce. I gave the owner a call this morning to ascertain if there had been any damages, and she told me everything was fine. She even put Mr. Croc's painting in the window display.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
A soft beep came through the line, leaking in from Alfred's end.  
  
“Oh dear. You might want to hurry over to the kitchen, sir.”

  
  
Bruce raced down the stairs to the main floor, half expecting to find Nigma rigging some ridiculous puzzle-trap around his refrigerator. He had brought one rogue home, after all, why not a few more? What he did find was far more disturbing. The Joker had left the bedroom without them noticing and was standing in the kitchen, frowning at the blender, a bowl of batter by his elbow. The stove was also on fire.  
  
After a moment's shock, Bruce leaped into action, snatching the fire extinguisher from its hook and smothering the small flames with a stream of white foam. The Joker did not seem disturbed by any of this. He made a thoughtful noise, then yanked the extinguisher out of Bruce's hands.  
  
“There's an idea,” he said, and squirted a burst of foam into the blender. He then tossed the extinguisher aside.  
  
Bruce watched in baffled consternation as the Joker rifled around Alfred's kitchen, picking up items seemingly at random and tossing them into the blender.  
  
“What is that?” Bruce asked, though he feared the answer.  
  
The Joker glanced up from the small bottle of stove polish he was holding. “Hangover cure,” he replied, then tossed the entire bottle into the blender. Bruce eyed the appliance with extreme skepticism. The Joker was a genius when it came to chemistry, and Bruce would not be surprised if the clown were able to home brew some kind of explosive neurotoxin in Bruce's own kitchen.

“I think most of those ingredients would kill you.”  
  
“Then you wouldn't have to worry about the hangover anymore, would you? Ha!” Joker flashed his teeth. He retrieved a pan full of charred black triangle shapes from the stove top and shoved them in Bruce's direction. “Pancake?”  
  
On closer inspection, the triangle shapes were lumpy clown faces.  
  
Bruce would rather snort fear gas than willingly ingest any food item prepared by the Joker. He wasn't stupid enough to say that, of course. “I think I might throw up if I try to eat anything,” Bruce told him. It wasn't technically a lie. Knowing Joker, the pancakes were probably garnished with bleach.  
  
“Your loss.” Joker shrugged and tossed the pan back on the stove with a bang.  
  
“So...” Bruce groped for an opening topic. There were some questions that, while perfectly safe to ask normal people, would be much too dangerous to ask a man like the Joker. Questions like, “Why are you in my home?” and, “Where are your pants?”  
  
He settled for, “About last night.”  
  
“Hmm.” Joker rubbed his chin in an exaggerated gesture of thought, his eyes turned up to the ceiling. “I give it a 6. You get docked points for falling asleep on me.”  
  
“You give what a 6?” he asked. He regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth. The Joker was already trying to derail the conversation, and he had fallen for it. Nothing could have happened between them. Alfred would have said something.  
  
“And the morning after service is awful. Aren't all you rich twits supposed to have servants to make your breakfast for you?”  
  
“My butler is on vacation.”  
  
“Tch. Never a Jeeves around when you need one.”  Joker picked up one of the burnt pancakes and shoved it in the hole of the inexplicable lion-plane-church-birdhouse, which he had brought downstairs with him. “Where's your paprika?”  
  
“Um.” Bruce scanned over the many, many kitchen cabinets. The kitchen was Alfred's domain, and Bruce knew little about its contents other than a few staples like silverware and coffee.  
  
“Never mind,” Joker said, his poison green eyes rolling. “Wouldn't want you to strain yourself.” He opened a cabinet at random and started pawing through it.  
  
Bruce relaxed a fraction. Joker wasn't acting like he knew any new secrets, in fact he seemed as dismissive of Bruce Wayne as he always was. That was one bullet dodged.  
  
“How about the meeting? Did you and the Riddler reach a resolution?”  
  
“Hmmm.” Joker crossed his arms and leaned back against the counter, head thunking into the cabinet behind him. “Let me see. We agreed to disagree on the best way to kill Batman, had a long discussion on the merits of online clothes shopping, and I think he ended the evening sobbing in a corner about his crush.” Joker counted these points off on his slender fingers as he talked, face screwing up in concentration. He must have reached a block in his memory, because he threw his hands out and snapped, “Why don't you ask Eddie? I'm busy here.”  
  
Bruce was all too happy for the excuse to leave the kitchen. He settled himself in the adjoining dining room, sitting across from the open doorway so he could keep one eye on the clown as he pulled his phone out. On the wall across from him, a new painting had been nailed into the plaster, off center and tilted. It looked like a seven year old's best attempt at a bowl of fruit.

  
  
Now that he had a moment with less distraction, he tried again in earnest to remember whatever he could about the previous night. The interior of the Quaff and Color came back to him slowly, in a light haze. It had struck him as a warm place, freshly painted in bright colors, with as many chairs and easels as could be crammed into the modest space.  
  
Bruce had strategically placed himself between Joker and the Riddler, to serve as a physical barrier and mediator between the two. It had helped that Riddler had chosen a spot where the rest of the room and the exits were easily monitored.  
  
He would soon come to regret this decision. Where a long dining table would have allowed the two men to glare and snipe at each other face to face, this arrangement meant they had to talk to each other around Bruce.  
  
With more clarity than he desired, he could remember the picture of Riddler draped over his chair, hips canted rakishly, neck craned upward so he could catch the Joker's eye over Bruce's shoulder. He'd been saying some awful riddle—no, Bruce remembered.  
  
“So. Riddle me this: what kind of coat can only be put on when wet?”  
  
Bruce had done his best to ignore the man. Part of him, probably the well-bred part, felt needled by Nigma's new... 'look'. It was the shirt, and the way it hung open nearly to his stomach, putting his new question mark scar on proud display. The sight of it made Bruce's fingers itch. Every time Bruce looked over at the man's (surprisingly buff) chest, he was almost overcome by the compulsion to reach out and button that goddamn shirt.  
  
“Paint,” Joker answered.  
  
The owner swooped by, depositing a bottle of wine on each of their tables, and Bruce suppressed the twitching of his hands towards neglected buttons in favor of pouring himself a glass. His first mistake.  
  
“So!” the owner clapped her hands, beaming to the room of assorted freaks and gangsters. “Here at the Quaff and Color, you have to know how to quaff properly! This is how we do it.” She poured herself a generous glass of wine and then threw the contents into her mouth, splashing her cheeks and chin liberally.  
  
“I can get behind that,” the Penguin laughed, and quaffed a glass of his own. Several others followed suit.  
  
Bruce frowned at the wine balloon in his hand, then looked up into the owner's expectant eyes. When in Rome, he figured. He did his best to quaff the whole glass in one go without dousing his good suit jacket. The owner nodded her approval.  
  
“Mr. Benson here will give you a quick art lesson and then we'll leave you folks to get on with your painting!” the owner said, beckoning the terrified art teacher to the center of the room.  
  
The lesson itself was a blur. Bruce hadn't had much interest in painting since he was a kid, and he had other things to focus on. Riddler and Joker spent the entire time needling each other, until Croc hissed at them to shut up.  
  
“Some of us are trying to learn a thing here!”  
  
“As I recall, we came here to negotiate,” Riddler snapped at him.  
  
“You can at least wait until the lesson is over,” Mr. Freeze said.  
  
“Ugh. Fine.” Nigma crossed his arms and sat back with a huff, looking like the petulant hero of some leprechaun romance novel. “We know what a penumbra is, get on with it!”  
  
By the time the art lesson ended, Bruce was halfway through his wine bottle, and that was where things got really hazy. He remembered reflecting, as the Joker sprinkled wine into his paints, that this had to be one of the more surreal nights of his life. The mundanity of it was somehow stranger than invading aliens or parallel dimensions. No violence, no mayhem, no traps, just him sitting at an easel in the midst of his worst enemies, a Riddler who was trying his damnedest to be sexy on his right and a Joker who wouldn't stop scowling at his left.  
  
“Please stop glaring at my cleavage, Mr. Wayne,” Riddler told him.  
  
Joker told a knock knock joke—which one? They were all terrible. Nigma responded with a riddle and Bruce had another glass, just one more glass to fortify himself. He said something to catch their attention, what was it?  
  
“The flirting's cute, but can we get down to business?” That was it. Both men stopped trying to skewer each other with their eyes and looked at him. God, he'd really said that. It was a miracle he hadn't gotten a pallet knife through the eye, and this was why Bruce never drank.  
  
“So. What is this whole war really about? Territory? Ego? Did he steal your donut?”  
  
“What is it always about?” Joker asked, painting a broad streak of purple down the center of his canvas. They were supposed to be painting the still life on the table, but Joker never had liked following guidelines. The clown switched to an angular brush and drew a black bat onto the top corner.  
  
“The big bad bat,” Riddler mused. His own painting in progress, though it did involve a fruit bowl, was laughably out of proportion. All the fruit had question marks on them.  
  
And then....and then. What? This was the important part, the actual talks, and Bruce could barely remember any of it. It had been about Batman, he was fairly sure, each wanting the glory of killing him all to themselves. He'd asked them why they couldn't collaborate.  
  
“I offered,” Nigma replied, and tapped the dot of his question mark scar. “He shot me down.”  
  
Joker made a thoughtful noise. “That was almost funny,” he said.  
  
Then what, then what?  
  
There was—singing?  
  
Pulsing lights that throbbed with music, a kaleidoscope of voices laughing, talking, singing, each fading into the next.  
  
_"—It wouldn't be me, if it was easy—"_  
  
_"—RAZZLE DAZZLE 'em—"_  
  
_"—I faced it all and I stood tall—"_  
  
And surely the alcohol had muddled his memories even more than he thought, because he could have sworn the singers were all his most familiar villains.  
  
_"—a guy like you should wear a warning—"_  
  
_"—I believed that love was here to stay—"_

 _"--You can tell my arms to go back to the farm--"_  
  
_"--here am I, the divided self--"_  
  
He struggled through the wreckage of his memories, hunting for some context to Joker's acid-stripped voice singing in a minor key, for Mr. Freeze crooning in a monotone, for Harvey somehow pulling off a duet with himself and Penguin squawking between verses.  
  
_"_ Are you making fun of me."  
  
"No, no, really, Vanilla Ice is right up your alley—"  
  
Shattering glass? And then everything had been muffled through a wall for a while.  
  
_"—I'm a tree that grows hearts, one for each that you take—"_  
  
_"—I'm tellin' you brother, it's a frightful sight—"_  
  
"HEY, are you going to sing or not? The rest of us have already embarrassed ourselves."  
  
Nothing else came to him, no matter how hard he tried.  
  
Alright. He needed to collect witness statements and try to piece together the missing bits of his memory. While he waited for his phone to wake up, he quickly ranked his enemies by probable alcohol tolerance versus likelihood that they would talk to him, and decided it only made sense to talk to the Riddler first. The first thing he noticed when he opened his contacts list was that someone had made a new group, titled “THE USUAL SUSPECTS.” In that list he found a whole lot of numbers he was sure he hadn't had before, and a few he did recognize, all under changed names. They ranged from innocuous (FOWL FRIEND) to petty insults (CAN'T TAKE A JOKE).  After some consideration, he tapped the number listed under “I'M IRRITATING!”  
  
The phone rang six times before a hoarse voice answered. “Riddle me this! My name is a mystery, my patience is history, my suit is a forest and blockheads deal me blows in broad daylight. What am I?”  
  
Bruce could not restrain his groan.  
  
“Mr. Nigma, I'm really not in the mood for--”  
  
“A HUNGOVER GENIUS WHO IS NOT TALKING TO YOU AT THIS HOUR.”  
  
The call ended.  
  
“Guess I'll try back later,” Bruce grumbled. He glanced up to make sure Joker hadn't set anything else on fire, just in time to see the man throw a whole egg (shell included) into his bowl of batter. Bruce grimaced.

  
  
If Riddler wasn't ready to talk, then Harvey would be his next best bet. They were friends, still, or so Bruce liked to think. He would talk to Bruce. Harvey's name had been changed in the phone to  'PHANTOM OF THE OPERA'  
  
“I'm not talking to you,” Harvey said by way of greeting.  
  
“Oh god. What did I do?” Bruce asked.

“You set the whole party up, is what you did. Three. Hours,” Harvey growled. “I got stuck sitting between Crane and Freeze, and then you gave them alcohol. For three hours.”  
  
“I'm....sorry?”  
  
“Do you know what those two are like when they're drunk? I had one asshole on the right ranting on and on about how mean and stupid his old bosses were for firing him, and another, mopier asshole on the left telling sob stories about his wife. Three hours, Bruce! And my painting came out awful!”  
  
“You think you had it bad? I was stuck in between Joker and Riddler.”  
  
“Big hardship, when you were only there for 45 minutes. I had to stick out the entire thing and the karaoke bar afterward.”  
  
“The what?” Bruce felt a trickle of cold dread down his spine. “I _left_?”  
  
“You don't remember, do you? Why am I not surprised.” A soft pop and hiss in the background, as if a bottle had been opened. “You know, you're a meaner drunk than I remember. Get a couple cocktails in you at a fancy society do and you’re mister bubbly, but this? I haven’t seen you go all quiet and intense since college. I guess Nigma was right. You do fake it.”  
  
Bruce covered his eyes with one palm. From the kitchen there drifted soft dinosaur noises, followed by a rustling of plastic and the clatter of a spoon in a bowl.  
  
“Please tell me we at least made some headway on the cease fire.”  
  
“I have no idea. To be honest, I tuned out most of their nonsense. “Riddles” this and “punchline” that, something about when dying people stop wiggling, all the usual bullshit.” Bruce heard a clank, as of a bottle being set none too gently on a counter. “Until suddenly I hear you say:  
  
'Alright. You both want to fuck Batman.'”  
  
“I didn't,” Bruce said in soft horror.  
  
“You did. Made me spit my goddamn wine out, you bastard. Ruined my canvas. So Nigma butts in all panicked-like, and he says,  
  
“'No no, _kill_ Batman, _kill_ him!'  
  
“And you just nodded and you said, 'Right. You both want to fuck batman. I'm getting fucking Batman and you can fight over him in person, so you can stop destroying my goddamn city.' Then you left.”  
  
“And they didn't kill each other once I was gone?”  
  
“Riddler was too busy trying to convince everyone he didn't want to fuck Batman. Joker never even denied it, but we all know how he is. None of us really believed you would _get_ Batman. Why would he enter a room full of armed, tipsy criminals just because some drunk billionaire asked him to? But lo and behold, 10 minutes later, who walks in? Batman.”  
  
Bruce looked over himself, noting the lack of wounds. “Was there a fight?”  
  
“It looked hairy there for a minute," Harvey admitted. "Everyone went right for their guns, and if we hadn't all drunk so much already, he would have had a fire fight on his hands. He just stood there and glared everyone down, said there were only two people who he was going to let fight over him."  
  
Bruce hissed out a breath through his teeth. "And that worked?"  
  
"Made everyone pause. Funny thing, when the Bat glares at you, you think twice before doing something stupid. Then Joker says,  
  
'That's right, kiddos, leave it to mommy and daddy to sort this out.'”  
  
Harvey broke off in a cackle. "What I wouldn't give for a picture of Nigma's face right then. So Batman went over and parked himself right in you chair. That's when I figured you weren't coming back. He finished your painting and your wine, by the way. Never thought I'd say this, but the Bat is a shit artist.”  
  
Bruce let his eyes trail up to the abomination nailed proudly to his wall. “Can't be good at everything,” he said.  
  
“What the hell did you tell him, anyway?”  
  
“I wish I could tell you. I don't remember anything after the painting tutorial.” Bruce was never drinking again. Ever. “So they, what, talked?”  
  
Harvey barked out a laugh. “So, Batman sits down, right? And the first thing Nigma says to him is, 'I don't know what the rich boy told you, but I'm not interested in conjugal relations of any kind. With you.' And I didn’t suspect him of anything before, but the more he protests, the more I wonder, y'know? Anyway, Batman just grunts at him, so Nigma, he says, 'All I want is to finally defeat you in an intricate chess match of stunning intellect, so all of Gotham will have to admit my superiority once and for all!'  
  
“Then Joker leans over and he says, 'Eddie, stop talking dirty to him in front of me.' Heh. That shut Nigma up. After that I think they did talk business for a while. I tuned out again when they got into their snuff fantasies.”  
  
“...ah. Great. So what was that about a karaoke bar?”  
  
“That was Harley's idea. We were all bored of painting, so she suggested karaoke. I didn't think the Bat would go along with it, but apparently, it's 'essential to business deals in Japan.'”  
  
“It is,” Bruce agreed absently. “So Batman went with you to karaoke?”  
  
“Yeah, he tried to keep us all in line. I couldn't tell if he was actually drunk or not, with that mask of his. I think he even got up and sang at one point. I’ll be honest, I don't remember much about the karaoke. It's all just a blur after Freeze threw Joker out a window.”  
  
“Freeze threw Joker out a window.”  
  
“Yeah.” More clinking, and the gurgle of a throat swallowing close to the phone. “I don't remember why, but I'm sure he deserved it.”  
  
“Thanks, Harvey. I guess I have a lot of other phone calls to make. And,” he winced, “damages to pay for.”  
  
“Another Friday night in Gotham,” Harvey said, and hung up.

  
  
Bruce tried Harley (NOT YR PUDDIN) next. If anyone could have kept track of Joker last night, it'd be her. Unfortunately, the call went straight to voicemail. The same thing happened when he tried Poison Ivy's (MISS GREEN GENES) number. Bruce drummed his fingers on the tabletop, frowning at his contacts. Cobblepot seemed a likely source. He could be reasonable, and surely knew how to hold his liquor. Bruce gave “FOWL FRIEND” a call.  
  
“Who is this?” Oswald Cobblepot answered, alert with only a little gravel hiding under his clipped tones.  
  
“Oh, it's Bruce. Bruce Wayne.”  
  
“Mr. Wayne! I don't recall giving you my phone number.” Cobblepot cleared his throat in that birdlike way he had. “I must compliment you on your choice of venue for last night. The wine was excellent and the art teacher wasn't a complete fool, no matter what Eddie says.”  
  
“It wasn't easy to find,” Bruce said. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I'm trying to piece together what happened after I...”  
  
“Ah. Of course. You did bow out quite early. A little rude, for a host, but I understand it might have been for the best, given your...state.”  
  
Bruce coughed. “It was very good wine.”  
  
“Yes. You may be interested to know that the Bat showed up. We're all very curious how you managed to contact our fine featherless friend.”  
  
“Probably the bat signal. Did Joker and Riddler come to an agreement?”  
  
The Penguin cleared his throat with a small, embarrassed sort of squawk.  
  
“I was so absorbed in my painting, you know, I didn't pay as much attention as I should have. I'm quite the Rembrandt with a  brush, if I do say so myself.”  
  
An image came back to Bruce of Cobblepot snoring into his canvas, long nose smearing a streak through a finely detailed apple.  
  
“I'm sure,” Bruce said. “Now what's this I hear about a karaoke bar?”  
  
“What better way to cap off a night of wine and art than a little song? It was the Bat's idea, if you can believe it.”  
  
“Did everyone go?”  
  
“Most everyone. I don't recall seeing Clayface after...”  
  
Whatever Penguin said next was drowned out by the rev of a chainsaw from the kitchen.  
  
“...have quite a few hidden songbirds in our midst. Did you know Dr. Crane was a bass? Such a powerful voice for such a slight frame.”  
  
“Uh—uh huh,” Bruce mumbled, distracted, as he stood halfway out of his chair and craned his neck to see into the kitchen. Joker waltzed back into view, flapping a pair of oven mitts like hand puppets. He had painted faces on to them and was muttering under his breath in high-pitched tones. Bruce eased back into his seat.    
  
“...and I didn’t think they’d have the Omen suite on the machine but there it was, though it really doesn’t sound the same without a full choir—”  
  
“Fascinating,” Bruce cut in. “Do you remember the name of the karaoke bar?”  
  
“It was Hugo's Speakeasy. Not my usual caliber of place, but by that stage in the raucous revelry one hardly notices a little water in the ale.”  
  
“Thank you. I hear I might have to compensate them for a broken window.”  
  
“Dr. Fries did loose his head a little, didn't he?” Penguin chortled. “I can hardly blame him. The Joker should have known better than to suggest that song. Oh, but when does that unhinged harlequin ever bother with restraint? It's a miracle that a man so addicted to ruffling feathers has survived this long.”  
  
Another memory bubbled up: a snatch of song paired with the sight of Joker lounging on the lip of the stage, dark red lips pulled back to show teeth, green apple eyes boring into Bruce's.  
  
_“--why'd I have to go and break what can't be fixed?--”_  
  
“Was there any other fighting?” Bruce asked.  
  
“We were all on our best behavior, such as it is. Not a single punch thrown. There was one tense moment when the Bat tackled Eddie up on stage, and we were all sure that ruminant rodent had finally snapped. However, all he did was button up Eddie's shirt.”  
  
Bruce felt his cheeks heat. Well, it was a stupid look anyway. The Riddler ought to thank him.  
  
The Joker shrieked from the kitchen. Bruce leaned sharply to the right for a better look through the door. Joker was standing on one leg, body folded up in a defensive position, and before him stood a scowling Cassie in her pajamas. Bruce's stomach dropped. Most of the kids were out helping with fallout from the turf war, and he had completely forgotten she was still here.  
  
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Cobblepot,” he said quickly. “You've been very helpful.”  
  
“You're very welcome, Mr. Wayne. Do let me know if you ever throw another little party like this one. I enjoyed myself tremendously.”

  
  
Bruce barely paid any attention to the man's parting words, his full attention riveted on the little drama unfolding in the kitchen. Cassie had yet to move or speak, staring up at the Joker with that fearless, piercing stare of hers. Joker gradually unfolded, setting both legs on the ground. As an afterthought, he thrust a plate of (not charred) pancakes out in offering.  
  
Without breaking eye contact, Cassie sidestepped to a nearby cabinet, poured herself a bowl of cereal, and walked out of the kitchen, each movement as pointed and deliberate as a punch.  
  
She stopped to give Bruce a look on her way out, communicating with only a narrowing of her eyes exactly how disappointed she was in him. Then she left.  
  
Joker drifted to the doorway, one hand pressed over his heart. "Real chatterbox, that one," he grumbled.  
  
"Cassie has aphasia," Bruce said.  
  
"I forgot all about your crippling addiction to adopting children," Joker said. "Where's the rest of your moppets? You should have enough kids here for a full football team."  
  
Crap. Bruce groped around for a good excuse. "College," he said.  
  
Joker's eyes narrowed. "Aren't several of them preteens?"  
  
"They're all very precocious."  
  
Joker tilted his head, expression skeptical. To Bruce's dismay, the clown pulled out a seat and collapsed into it, bare feet landing up on the table. Alfred was probably having a controlled, stoic fit down in the batcave over that. “Soooo. How are the interviews going, detective?”  
  
Bruce tensed, his eyes flicking up to meet the Joker's. The clown's mouth curled gently at the corners in a Mona Lisa smile. It was impossible to tell whether that sharpness in his eyes was simple, sadistic amusement or something more _knowing_. Maybe Bruce was projecting, picking out evidence that his worst fear had come true simply because Bruce always saw the worst in things.  
  
It may have been just a quip. Batman wasn't the only detective in the world, and it was a natural joke to make, given the circumstances. That didn't stop Bruce from mentally preparing contingency plans in case the Joker _did_ know.  
  
The Joker was still watching him, waiting for an answer.  
  
“So far all I've learned is that you got thrown through a window,” Bruce said.  
  
“That explains all the glass in my hair,” Joker mused, rustling his green mop with one hand. A few glittering specks fell out on to the floor.  
  
Bruce bit his lip, debating whether to reveal more. On the plus side, it might jog the Joker's memory. On the down side, it might jog the Joker's memory. The fewer connections the clown made between Bruce and Batman, the better. Between the hangover and the prospect of spending all morning talking to villains, Bruce felt more reckless than usual. “I hear Batman joined the party.”  
  
Joker hummed. His little smile spasmed at the corners, threatening to widen. A giggle bubbled out of him, like the thunderclap preceding the storm, and then he was laughing loud and wild with complete abandon. Bruce watched in astonishment. The Joker hadn't even smiled, much less laughed, in months, and no one had been able to figure out why.  
  
The phone in his hand beeped incessantly for his attention. 'Quaff Color,' the caller ID read, so Bruce answered the call while he watched Joker's shaking frame bend double.  
  
“Hi Mr. Wayne! This is Brenda, from the Quaff and Color? I just wanted to let you know that we found Mr. Karlo mixed in with the still life materials. I knew we didn't have that many fruit bowls. I wasn't sure if someone might be missing him, so I thought I'd give you a call and let you know. He's on his way out now.”  
  
That explained why Clayface wasn't at the Karaoke bar.  
  
“Thank you, Brenda. Is everything alright over there?”  
  
“We're just doing some clean up, Mr. Wayne, nothing to worry about. Dr. Eisley left a lot of scuff marks on the ceiling.”  
  
Bruce tried to parse that as Joker's laughter echoed around him.  
  
“Eisley did?”  
  
“I never knew she could climb like that! Oh. Uh, you might want to ask your friend Batman if his boat is alright.”  
  
“His boat.”  
  
“Yes. There were, threats made. About stealing it.” She did not elaborate.  
  
“Did anything else happen last night?”  
  
“Dr. Quinzel painted a very good picture. And so did Mr. Bane.” He heard rustling and clacking, as if she was flipping through canvases as she spoke. “Mr. Joker's work is quite good too, even though I'm not sure what it is.”  
  
Joker laughed even harder, completely out of control, and the din of it made Bruce's aching head throb so he could hardly understand what the proprietor was saying.  
   
“Thank you, Brenda, I'll let you get back to work.”  
  
Joker’s giggles finally began to wind down. He had a hand pressed over his mouth, muffling his smile, and his bright, shining eyes flitted up to meet Bruce’s. Bruce stared uneasily back. It frayed his nerves, being this close to the Joker without his suit on. He didn’t need Kevlar to take the other man in a fight, but to do so would give himself away. Joker knew him too well, knew how he moved, how he fought, knew the taste of his knuckles and the bite of his elbow.  
  
This was a delicate situation, and he needed to keep the Joker amicable while preventing him from destroying too much of the manor. He waded through the pain of his hangover, struggling to pull up as much of the Brucie Wayne persona around himself as he could.  
  
“Is something funny?” he asked, affecting irritated confusion.  
  
“Oh, I'm not the kind of girl to kiss and tell.” Here the clown winked. “Not without a substantial bribe or a book deal, anyway.”  
  
Bruce's eye twitched. “Have you remembered anything important?”  
  
“Now that you mention it, I did have a little spark of memory just now.” The dark red lips pulled back, baring crooked teeth. “A very _interesting_ little piece of information just zip-zagged back into my brain.”  
  
Here it comes, Bruce thought. “And what was that?”  
  
“Granny's old flapjacks recipe!” Joker beamed at this revelation. “Or was it my formula for napalm? So hard to tell the difference between the two, really.”

  
  
Bruce sagged in relief and rolled his eyes. This wasn't getting him anywhere. All the clown was going to do was toy with him, same as he always did. In one decisive motion he angled his body away from the Joker and retreated to the safety of his phone screen. Who to call next? He flicked through the list a few times before picking “MR BRIGHTSIDE” out of sheer curiosity, having no idea who that could be.  
  
“No room, no room!” answered a high voice with an exaggerated British accent.  
  
The pounding in his head increased exponentially. “Mr. Tetch. Bruce Wayne here.”  
  
“Oh, have mercy, Red Queen. We have not finished painting the roses yet.”  
  
“Why am I the Red Queen?” Bruce asked before he could stop himself. Across the table, Joker's eyebrows rose.  
  
“The Cheshire cat is still himself, even if he leaves his smile behind. So who is left to argue with Edward's white crown?”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
A bare toe kicked into his shin, startling him to attention. The Joker smiled with sickly-sweet innocence, his feet suspiciously absent from the tabletop.  
  
“Listen Mr. Te—”  
  
“Hatter.”  
  
“Mr. Hatter. Can you tell me anything about the events of last night?”  
  
“Oh, infinite are the tales I could tell! Which do you wish to hear? How we drank so much that the Riddler's riddles came out all backwards and sideways, and upset him ever so much? How the Big Bad Bat took his tea with the clowns, and the three of them cried over his phone until the Jabberwocky stopped singing? Perhaps a tale of the carpenter?”  
  
Joker kicked Bruce's shin again.  
  
“What?” Bruce hissed, phone muzzled against his shoulder. The Joker waved at him, grinning like a naughty schoolboy. With a scowl that could melt glass, Bruce went back to the phone.  
  
“--ello? Mr. Wayne?”  
  
“Sorry about that. Want I really want to know is if Jok—I mean, the Cheshire cat and the White Queen agreed to end the war.”  
  
"I daresay, the war should be ended now! Yes, yes, the two generals left their chessmen behind and settled everything with a dance on the battlefield."  
  
Bruce tried to parse this, and couldn't find a Wonderland reference in it.  
  
"You mean, they had a fight?"  
  
"I mean they had a dance battle," Tetch said in a flatter tone.  
  
Bruce tried to picture this, and the idea of Riddler and the Joker swing dancing side by side came so readily to mind he couldn't figure out if it was a daydream or a memory.  
  
"Were they any good?"  
  
"Fred Astaire would have shed tears," Jervis said. He did not specify whether they would be tears of awe or shame.  
  
A third time, the clown’s foot snapped out in assault against Bruce's defenseless shin bone, but this time Bruce was waiting for him. He caught the bare foot between his legs, squeezing tight so it couldn’t pull away.  
  
Bruce muffled the phone again. “Stop,” he hissed.

A light blazed up in the Joker's green eyes, like an LED bulb had flicked on behind the irises. He leaned forward, his smile sharp with anticipation. It was a look Bruce knew well, one that sent his hackles up. It was the same expression Joker had whenever Batman cornered him, and the air around them sizzled with tension, waiting for that first punch.  
  
With great effort, Bruce swallowed the anger down. He was Bruce Wayne right now, not Batman. Bruce Wayne could not punch the Joker, even f he really, really wanted to.  
  
“I mean it,” he said, trying to sound softer without coming off as weak. Joker would go for the throat if he sensed weakness. It was instinct, like a dog biting after a bloody steak. He couldn't help himself.  
  
“Hmmm.” Joker wiggled in his seat, the foot caught between Bruce's legs twisting around to stroke toes up his calf. “Give it back, or I'll take one of yours.”  
  
_Not Batman_ , Bruce chanted to himself as he eased his legs apart. The Joker sat back, triumphant, and left his foot right were it was. His toes tickled around the cuff of Bruce's pajama pants.  
  
“So you can dance, huh?” Bruce asked, hoping to cut the tension.  
  
"What kind of entertainer do you take me for?" the Joker demanded.  
  
"A comedian."  
  
"A clown can have hobbies."  
  
Bruce snorted.  
  
"...and Edward kept trying to grab the Joker's hand, but he forgot the trickster still had his joybuzzers on," Jervis was saying when Bruce put the phone back to his ear. "It was all very thrilling, until the Joker misstepped and fell off the stage. He missed the karaoke machine by scant inches."  
  
"So who won?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Alice woke up before the jury could pass a verdict."  
  
“Woke up, or fell aslee--?” Bruce began, and broke off when the clown launched himself across the table at him. He jammed a forearm upward by hard-trained reflex, caught the Joker’s soft white throat on the solid bone. Joker halted, gagging, his pale, pointed face so close that Bruce could feel the stir of breath on his cheek. His hands were—empty. If he’d taken any knives from the kitchen, he wasn’t holding one now. Their eyes met. Joker smiled, somehow sharp and sheepish at the same. Deftly he plucked the phone from Bruce’s hand and backed off his forearm.  
  
“Helloooo, Mad Chatter. Joker here. Thought I’d clear up a couple things while we had you on the line. What am I doing at the palace? Why, I think I’ll walk wherever I like, thank you! Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.”  
  
Joker stretched out over the dining room table, one knee cocked up like a girl lounging at a picnic, elbow braced on the table between Bruce’s arms. Bruce subtly pushed his chair backwards.  
  
“Oh, vorpal blades, yes, of course. Of course old Jonny boy got it wrong. No one could doubt your superior knowledge of The Looking Glass.” The Joker rolled his eyes and spun his finger near his temple in the “cuckoo” gesture, which Bruce thought was rich, coming from him. “Now see, I wanted to know about the duchess.” He gave Bruce a wink. Bruce stared back, irritated and confused. “Uh huh.  
Uh huh. South? Really? Huh. With the ship? Huh. Yes, I see. Then who was it who defenestrated me? Oh. Hrn. Mm-hmm. Well, I’ll be sure to tell the Queen for you. Toodles!”  
  
The phone beeped as Joker hung up.  
  
“Did you get the information you wanted?” Bruce asked, wary.  
  
“Nope. I couldn’t figure out a word of that nutjob’s rambling. That guy’s got an entire box of screws loose.” Joker tossed the phone on to the table. He tilted his head to the side, his eyes almost coy. “Hi.”  
  
“Hi?” Bruce repeated, wrong-footed in this unfamiliar territory. The other man’s relaxed posture did not put him at ease. Mercurial as he was agile, the Joker could strike before you even realized his mood had turned.  
  
“Come here often?” Joker asked.  His eyes dipped to Bruce’s neck, and trapped giggles vibrated in his chest.  
  
“I. Live here.”  
  
“So you do. Well!” Joker slammed his open palms down on the table, his smile back at its full, unsettling luster. “I think I smell my bacon burning. Excuse me as I exit stage left.” So saying, he rolled off the table, landed sprightly on his feet, and sauntered back into the kitchen. Bruce watched him go, more unsettled than he had been when he first spotted the clown in his bathroom. This was too much to try and process with a head full of jackhammers—he never had taken any aspirin. The bottle sat a floor up from him, tantalizingly close but too far to reach before the Joker got up to too much mischief. He could push through the pain. He was Batman, after all.

  
  
There was no entry for Killer Croc in his contacts; either Waylon didn’t have a phone or whoever had added all these numbers didn’t know it. His next try, based on a hunch, was “CAN’T TAKE A JOKE.”  
  
Mr. Freeze answered after five rings.  
  
“Make it quick.”  
  
“Dr. Fries. This is Bruce Wayne.”  
  
“Wayne.” Freeze seemed to mull this over. “I do not recall giving you my number.”  
  
“I don’t remember getting your number. I don’t remember much at all. That’s why I wanted to ask you a few questions about last night.”  
  
“I will not speak of the karaoke,” Mr. Freeze said immediately.  
  
“Alright.” Bruce cleared his throat. “So, about the painting place.”  
  
“It was not a bad start to the night. The wine nearly gave me a little warmth back, such as I have not felt for a long time. But, whatever your intentions may have been, I fear the talks were not as productive as any of us would have liked them to be.”  
  
“That’s the gist I’m getting.”  
  
“Joker and Edward spent all their time battling egos, as they always do. Most of us were too invested in painting to keep them on track. And those of us who cannot hold a little wine made complete fools of themselves, yourself included.”  
  
Bruce remembered Brenda’s comments. “Did Ivy…?”  
  
“Started the evening interrogating the owner about the toxicity of the paints, and ended it swinging off the ceiling while threatening to steal Batman’s boat.”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
“It was not her best moment,” Mr. Freeze said. “If you wish to hear embarrassing stories, we could be here all day. I, however, have work to do. What is it that you really need to know, Wayne?”  
  
“Joker and Riddler. Did they reveal anything? Why they’re fighting, what could get them to stop?”  
  
“I can not answer that. You will have to call Dr. Crane. He was the one who spent half the night talking to Mr. Nigma.”  
  
“And the Joker?”  
  
“Hn. You will have to ask Batman.”

 

Mr. Freeze hung up. He hadn’t provided much information, but at least he had pointed Bruce in the right direction. Dr. Crane’s number was easy enough to find. It had been listed under “SQUARECROW.”  
  
“I am very short on patience this morning, so this had better be good,” Crane greeted him.  
  
“You and everyone else,” Bruce muttered. “Dr. Crane? This is Bruce Wayne”  
  
“Wayne? How did you get this number?”  
  
“I wish I could tell you. I just wanted to ask a few questions. I promise it won’t take up too much of your time.”  
  
“This is about our little soiree last night, is it? Fine. I suppose I can spare a few minutes. Not like I’m getting much done with this headache.”  
  
“I’ve called a few people already, and I’m getting the impression we didn’t accomplish much.”  
  
“There’s an understatement,” Crane said, followed by a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t think Eddie or Joker came to any kind of agreement. I did have a long talk with Eddie at the karaoke bar, finally. Confirmed a few hypotheses I’d been entertaining.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Well. They both claim that they’re fighting over who gets the glory of killing Batman. You seemed to think they were fighting over something else. And crass as you may have been, I think  you might have been half right.”  
  
Bruce’s eyebrows climbed slowly to his hairline.  
  
“You think they want to…?” He had not drunk enough alcohol to fully repeat his suggestion of the previous night.  
  
“I don’t think this whole thing is really about Batman at all. At least, not the way we thought it was. I’ve known Eddie long enough to tell when he has a fixation, and I’ll tell you, it’s not the Bat.”  
  
“Then…?”  
  
“It’s the Joker.”  
  
Silence in the dining room, broken only by the occasional muted thump from the kitchen. Bruce pined for the aspirin bottle.  
  
“You think the Riddler wants to...” he trailed off. “You think he has a crush on the Joker.”  
  
A loud crash came from the kitchen as what sounded like every pan in the cupboard clattered to the floor, creating such an awful racket it hit Bruce like a physical blow to his aching head. A single colander whirled into view, spinning like a top.  
  
“I’m going to stick with the word ‘fixation,’” Crane said. “Eddie can’t help obsessing over a puzzle he can’t solve, you see, and the Joker’s been baffling everyone lately. The way he stopped smiling, the murders with no joke to them, it’s a total break of character that no one can explain. And that’s all catnip to a man like Eddie. Add in the fact that Joker’s pretty damn smart when he can bother to focus, and our poor Riddler is hooked.”  
  
“You’re telling me,” Bruce began, slow and dangerous, “that all this fighting, all this death, is just the supervillain equivalent of pulling a girl’s pigtails.”  
  
“Welcome to the cape and costume crowd, Mr. Wayne, where we go overboard about everything.”  
  
Bruce scrubbed a hand down his face. Anger burned hot and furious in him, just at the pettiness of it. This wasn’t the time for anger. That could wait until he had the batsuit on again.  
  
“Joker’s laughing again,” he said once he could trust himself not to growl. “So that’s it. The Riddler’s big puzzle is gone.”  
  
“Is he, now? That’s curious. In any case, I think we’ve all learned that we should leave those two to fight this out for themselves. This isn’t anything the rest of us need to be mixed up in. That’s the one thing you said last night that I can 100% agree with.”  
  
“I’m glad to hear that. If we deprive them of their troops, the war might actually end.”  
  
“And as much as I enjoyed the opportunity for field testing, I think it’s time it ended,” Scarecrow agreed. “Anything else, Mr. Wayne?”  
  
“Did you see what Joker was doing at the karaoke bar?”  
  
“He sang a few times. He could have a nice voice if it weren’t for all the laryngeal damage. I lost track of him for a while after the window incident. I’d had a few too many by that point, and Eddie was being a handful, so I didn’t pay him much attention. I figured Batman could handle it if Joker got out of hand.”  
  
“Thank you, Dr. Crane. You’ve been the most helpful so far.”  
  
“Maybe keep that in mind the next time I need funding,” Crane said, and hung up.  
  
“Yeah. Right,” Bruce grumbled to the silent phone.

 

Technically, he now had all the information he needed. He had gotten answers about the feud, and could see the way to ending it. On a personal level, he remained unsatisfied. It bothered him that he had spent so much time in close quarters with the Joker while lacking any inhibitions. He wanted to know what _he’d_ been doing that night, and what the rogues couldn’t know was that Batman himself had gotten so black out drunk he didn’t remember a thing. However, that curiosity remained a secondary priority. For now, his next objective was contacting the karaoke bar.  
  
A quick google search netted him the phone number for Hugo’s Speakeasy. A gruff male voice answered right away and demanded to know his business. Bruce quickly introduced himself and explained his business.  
  
“Wayne?” the owner repeated. “Like, big shot CEO billionaire Wayne? What, you paying for those freaks?”  
  
“Cleaning up after them. I hear I might owe you a window?”  
  
“Yeah, that robo-jerk busted up my whole store front. Broke a bunch of my lights, too. And as long as you got that checkbook out, why don’t you pay me for all the emotional damage I got just from seeing those clowns walk in?”  
  
“By ‘clowns,’ do you mean actual clowns, or the whole group?” he asked. His eyes flicked to the kitchen—Joker hadn’t come back into view since he’d dropped all those pans.  
  
“With the freaking Joker there? Gee, which do you think?” From over the line came a scuffing and swishing noise, followed by a clink of broken glass. “Listen, buddy, I’ve heard a lot of awful singers. I run a karaoke bar. But some of those guys? I’m going to have post-traumatic flashbacks every time I hear birds squawking.”  
  
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”  
  
“The whole place is trashed,” the owner continued, gaining steam. “I got tables thrown everywhere, lamps broken, freaking—leaves or something somewhere, and someone left that creepy-ass, freakish puppet hanging on the ceiling fan.”  
  
“Do you mean—”  
  
Before Bruce could finish voicing his suspicion, the owner let out a yelp and dropped the phone to the ground with a loud static-y clatter.  
  
“Hello? Hello!” Bruce called.  
  
“Who ya callin’ a freak, weasel-face!” the unmistakable gravelly lisp of Scarface bellowed from somewhere else in the bar.  
  
“P-please not so loud, Mr. Scarface, sir. My head is hurting very much.”  
  
“Serves you right, you lightweight! Couple shots of hooch and you're useless.”  
  
Scarface was attacking the barkeeper. Bruce bolted up from the chair, already planning the quickest route from his home to the bar before he could think things through. It took meeting Joker’s green eyes in the kitchen doorway to stop him. First, he would never get all the way to the city in time to stop—what? He didn’t even know what had happened yet. There had been no gunshots, not even the distinctive rat-a-tat of Scarface’s favored tommy gun.  
  
Adrenaline still singing in him, he brought the phone back up to his mouth and tried again, louder. “Is anyone there? Hello?”  
  
The Joker leaned his hips against the door frame and tilted his head, expression quizzical.  
  
“What’s that?” Scarface asked, voice quiet and far away.  
  
More amplified rustling came over the line, and then he heard Arnold Wesker’s quiet voice stammer out, “I-I’m very sorry, but the m-man you were speaking with just ran out.”  
  
Bruce let out a quiet sigh of relief.  
  
“This is Arnold Wesker, right? I’m Bruce Wayne.”  
  
“What’d you answer for, dummy? We gotta get out of here!”  
  
“But it’s Bruce Wayne, Mr. Scarface.”  
  
“Gimme dat, I’ll talk to him,” Scarface said. Bruce had to give the ventriloquist credit—the puppet’s voice really did sound like it was further from the receiver. He heard shifting cloth and a loud clank, like the phone had just knocked against something hard and hollow. “Say, where’d you zip off to, Wayne? You missed the gest part of the night, see?”  
  
“Please stop yelling,” Wesker pleaded.  
  
“Close your head, dummy.”  
  
“I had business to take care of,” Bruce said.  
  
“Gusy geing goiled as an owl?”  
  
“Uh.”  
  
The Joker rolled his eyes, fingers clapping against his thumbs in a mime of flapping mouths. “Yak, yak, yak,” he mouthed.  
  
“While I have you on the line, could you give me a quick rundown on what happened?”  
  
“Whadaya want, a play gy play of what everyone sang?”  
  
“Did you keep track?” Bruce asked, his brow furrowing.  
  
“Say, what do you take me for? The night was full of good glackmail material, see?”  
  
“Blackmail material, huh? Like what?” Bruce asked, his tone even while his pulse picked up.  
  
The Joker made an exaggerated gasp, covering his mouth with his hands. Bruce ignored him.  
  
“You think I’d tell you for free? Pay up, gillionaire, and we’ll talk gusiness, see?”  
  
“Right. I just need a general idea of events, if you don’t mind.”  
“Say, you’d think you never went to a speakeasy before, Wayne. We did some crooning and drank some hooch, see? No one threw any lead. Even the clown gehaved himself.”  
  
“He did?” Bruce gave the Joker a doubtful look, prompting the clown to pout.  
  
“Yeah. He spent most of the night in the gent’s room with our fire extinguisher, see? They were goth pretty spifflicated.”  
  
“What was he doing with a fire extinguisher?”  
  
“I mean Gatman, you moron. He was the one putting out fires all night, see?”  
  
There came the dread back. “What were he and Batman doing in the bathroom.”  
  
Joker bent double, giggling into his hands.  This, shockingly, did nothing to make Bruce feel better.  
  
“Say, I didn’t go in there with them. Some goon threw me up on top of the ceiling fan, see? I didn’t see nothing.”  
  
“I see. Well, thank you for your time.”  
  
“You change your mind about that glackmail, you give me a ring, see? I’d ge happy to share for a few grand.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He hung up.

 

“Soooo,” Joker began. “What was that about Eddie having a crush on yours truly?”  
  
"We're going to go with the word 'fixation,'" Bruce said.  
  
"What, are Query and Echo not enough for the old boy these days? Oh, alas! Everywhere I go, I leave a trail of broken hearts behind me." He feigned a dramatic swoon, one slender wrist pressed to his forehead. "I simply can't help it! I am cursed with an excess of charm! As you yourself are apparently the latest victim." He bowed, spreading his hands in Bruce's direction.  
  
Right, he needed to nip this in the bud right now.  
  
"Listen, I know what you're thinking, waking up in my bathtub and all, but I don't think we actually--"  
  
His phone rang, the caller ID reading “NOT YR PUDDIN”. Joker's face fell.  
  
"Well don't let me keep you, Mr. Popular," Joker snapped, and stomped back inside the kitchen, muttering, "Slave over a hot stove all day and all he wants to do is talk to his friends. Typical."  
  
Bruce drifted back to the table and sat down again.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Brucie! Hi!” Harley Quinn. He couldn’t decide if he was relieved to hear from her or not. “I saw you called earlier when we were out of service range.”  
  
“Dr. Quinzel--”  
  
“Oh please, call me Harley. Listen, your friend Batman, Does he have insurance on his boat-thingy?”  
  
He did not.  
  
“I don't know. Why?”  
  
“We might have had a little accident off the coast of Cancún,” she replied, voice squeaky with sheepishness.  
  
“What—how did you get to  Cancún?”  
  
“Good question. Anyway, last night was a blast! You should have stayed longer, Brucie, you don't know how much fun you missed. Fantastic idea calling in Batman, by the way. I've wanted to tell Mr. J to just get over it and screw him for ages, but ah, never. Got the chance.”  
  
Or had the nerve, Bruce thought somewhat uncharitably.  
  
“I heard you all went out for karaoke.”  
  
“Yeah, it was fantastic! Me and Ivy might've hogged the machine for most of the night, haha.”  
  
“Did you see what happened to Batman?”  
  
“Why, is he missing? Y'know he's a creature of the night, right? Ya gotta wait until sundown before the batsignal will work. He's probably just sleeping upside down somewhere.”  
  
Bruce drummed his fingers on the table, considering a risky move. He didn't need any of the clowns connecting the dots, but perhaps, if he spun things just right, he could get what he wanted without risking his identity. He had to be careful—Harley wasn't as dumb as she let on.  
  
“I'll be honest with you, Harley, I woke up this morning to find the Joker in my house and I have no idea how he got here. I've done some calling around, and last anyone saw, he was with Batman. So you can understand my concern.”  
  
“Mr. J's with you? Huh. That's weird. So, you're wondering why the Bat left an arch criminal at your place.”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
“Y'know, I'll bet Mr. J gave him the slip and then came out to your house on his own. He used to tell me he's always wanted to sleep in a mansion. Maybe he decided to go make a dream come true!”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
“Ooor, maybe they both came to your house to see you, and you just haven't found Batman yet because your mansion has too many rooms.”  
  
“I guess that's a possibility. Do you remember what they were doing during karaoke?”  
  
“Just singing and drinking like the rest of us. Hmm. Let me think. They both vanished into the bathroom for a while after Freezie had his little temper tantrum.”  
  
“The window incident.”  
  
“Yeah. I poked my head in a few times. Batman was helping Mr. J pick all the glass out of himself. Hard to do with those big thick gauntlets, y'know?”  
  
Another slot filled in on his mental time line. He would not acknowledge the relief at finding out he and Joker had been doing something completely innocuous in that bathroom. Obviously, it had been foolish to assume otherwise.  
  
“When was the last time you saw either of them?”  
  
“Right before we left. Ivy and I slipped out early so we could stea—get our ride. I was gonna invite Mr. J to come with, but he was too busy making out with the bat, so we ditched him.”  
  
The phone slipped from Bruce's numb fingers and clattered to the hardwood floor. He stared blankly forward, not moving, barely breathing, his every cognitive process abruptly ground to a halt. Some soft, squeaky talking was coming from the phone still, but he couldn't register words in it.  
  
He hadn't. God above, please tell him he hadn't. Not the Joker. Not while inebriated. Not when he couldn't remember a thing. Not _in front of every major super criminal in Gotham._ No one else had mentioned it—had they not seen, or were they keeping the incident secret for reasons of their own? The potential blackmail material alone made his fingernails want to crawl off. Getting caught in compromising positions with people was supposed to be Bruce Wayne's territory, never Batman's.  
  
Bruce bent forward mechanically, picked up his phone, and put it back to his ear.  
  
“--ellooooo? You know I was joking, right?”  
  
“Right. Of course. I'm sorry, I had to check on the kitchen before Joker started another fire.”  
  
“Uh huh. Yeah, he's a handful alright. I better let you go so you can keep an eye on him. Good luck finding the bat in your belfry! Oh, and when you do find him? Tell him that whoever the heck 'Jason' is, he needs to sit down and have a long talk with him.”  
  
And down went his computing ability, again, right after he'd started to reboot. System Error: this program has encountered a problem and needs to close.  
  
“Jason,” Bruce repeated numbly.  
  
“Yeah. I don't know what's going on between those two, but any time you try to drunk dial one of your kids while sobbing about what an ass you were? It's a bad sign.”  
  
Bruce curled up in his chair and wished for death. He was never touching alcohol again. He was never even going to _smell_ anything alcoholic. If anyone so much as brought a glass of wine near him, he would beg off sick.  
  
“T.T.F.N.!” Harley chirped.  
  
Bruce cut the connection and swallowed. Then he called Alfred.  
  
“We wouldn't happen to be missing--” he remembered Joker was in the kitchen just in time to stop himself from saying 'batboat,' “--one of the yachts, would we?”  
  
“When you came home for your costume, you went back out in the batboat, sir. You arrived home in a taxi this morning. I assumed the boat was still parked in a cove somewhere.”  
  
Great. Add one unknown taxi driver to the list of people who might have seen Batman in a compromising position last night. As for the boat, Ivy must have made good on her threat to steal it. That was one part of Harley's story corroborated. As for the rest...  
  
In a haze of dread, Bruce opened up his call history. Sure enough, at about 1:30 am two outgoing calls had been made to Jason's phone number. Suddenly, the little notification icon in the corner which told him he had 5 new voicemails seemed a great deal more sinister. That could be dealt with later, he told himself. It wasn't running from the problem. He just had more important things to sort out first.

 

A rattle of metal to his left compelled him to raise his head again. The Joker entered the dining room from the door on the other side, a ladder balanced on one shoulder, his birdhouse clutched under one arm, and a bucket of purple paint dangling from his hand. Bruce had not seen the man leave the kitchen. He was starting to suspect the clown could teleport.  
  
"What are you doing?" Bruce asked, though he feared the answer.  
  
"Have you seen the wallpaper around here?" the Joker asked, slapping a hand against the nearest wall and almost dropping the ladder in the process. "This big, beautiful house has some of the dullest interiors I've ever laid eyes on. If I'm going to stay here, then I just have to add a little color. It won't kill you, Brucie, I promise." He winked.  
  
"You are not staying here," Bruce told him.  
  
"Think you can toss me out in the morning like any other floozy, do you?" The Joker performed some impressive maneuvering with his burdens in order to plant one hand on his hip. "I know your reputation, Mr. Wayne, and I'll have you know I'm not that kind of girl. I don't do one night stands or walks of shame, and that means I'll just have to move in. So help me, you will make an honest woman of me!" He tilted his chin up with a huff and marched out of the dining room through the opposite door.  
  
Normally a man of hair-trigger reflexes and staggering agility, Bruce now gaped after his departing nemesis without moving a muscle. It would have made no difference if he were tied to the chair with chains or rope or wire—the words pinned him more effectively than any traditional binding.  
  
Nothing had happened. Harley had been joking. Joker was just being his usual self, making assumptions after waking up in a notorious playboy's bathroom. Right?  
  
And then the rest of the clown's words finally sank in.  
  
“Wait, _what_ \--?”  
  
His phone rang. Bruce nearly fumbled it to the floor in his haste to answer and run at the same time.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Mr. Wayne. I apologize for my shortness earlier, I was feeling poorly.” Nigma. Just what he needed right now. “I wanted to congratulate you on your excellent performance last night.”  
  
“My what?”  
  
“Please, don't insult my intelligence. That Batman who just happened to show up at our little party last night? Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together could tell it was just you in a costume,” Riddler said. “A very expensive and accurate costume, but, well, you are a billionaire. After all, the real Batman would never be dumb enough to get drunk while surrounded by his enemies.”  
  
Bruce reached an intersection and paused, frantically peering down hallways. There was no sign of the Joker anywhere. In the distance, he could hear the wheeze of a saw, followed by a loud crash and a cat yowling. They didn't even _have_ a cat.  
  
He forced himself to focus. The Riddler was giving him an out for all his behavior last night, and he needed to take advantage of it.  
  
“I can't remember a thing about last night, Mr. Nigma. Maybe it was me, maybe it was really Batman.”  
  
“Not even going to deny that you have a replica batsuit?”  
  
“A man needs hobbies,” Bruce replied in his driest tone.  
  
“Regardless, our mystery Batman's choice of song was inspired.”  
  
“Batman sang karaoke?”  
  
“He did indeed.”  
  
His reputation would never recover from this.  
  
“What song?”  
  
“Every Breath You Take, sung in the best imitation of Batman's menacing growl I've ever heard from a drunk. Scared all the fools who believed you were the real deal witless. I think the ventriloquist almost soiled himself.”  
  
Then again.  
  
“By the way, do you know where the Joker went? His people won't stop hassling me.”  
  
A distant, high shriek sounded from down the hall. _“Wayne tell your brat to stop jumping out at me!”_ Joker bellowed, followed by a lot of yelling Bruce could only half make out. He caught the words “ceiling” and “xenomorph.” Bruce relaxed infinitesimally. Cassie could keep Joker in line, probably better than Bruce at the moment.  
  
“Ah. So he's there with you,” Riddler said. “Just tell me something. Has he laughed?”  
  
“He has,” Bruce said, his tone darkening dangerously close to batman.  
  
“Ah. Hmm. And do you know what it is that got him laughing again?”  
  
“No idea,” Bruce said, all false brightness and implied smiles. He enjoyed the silent frustration he could practically feel radiating over the line from Nigma. “We'll probably never know.”  
  
The Riddler made a small, unhappy noise.  
  
“If you need any more help mediating matters, have your people call my people,” Bruce told him smugly, and hung up.  
  
Now that he had stopped long enough to think, Bruce did what he should have done from the outset, and contacted Alfred.  
  
"Can you see Cassie and the Joker on the security feed?"  
  
"They're in the TV parlor, Master Bruce. They appear to be having a staring contest."  
  
"Let me know if anything happens."

 

This headache was hampering his performance too much. He needed to get it taken care of. Quickly, he stole upstairs to the medicine cabinet and swallowed several aspirin dry. They would take time to kick in, yet it felt like the very act of taking the pills banished a little of the pain. Placebo effect was a powerful thing.  
  
Bruce leaned against the wall of the bathroom and considered his phone. There was one more call he ought to make, one that he had been putting off since the beginning, to the single person left who could be serious and straightforward enough to answer the question he most feared. He paged down to the contact labeled "LUCHADOR DANTES."  
  
"Wayne," Bane greeted him in his low growl.  
  
“How did you know?”  
  
“I heard you were making the rounds. Asking questions about last night. Questions you wouldn't need to ask if you had bothered to stay. So, what do you have to ask me?”  
  
“I've just got one question left.” He took a deep breath and released it. “Did Joker and Batman kiss?”  
  
Bane was quiet for a minute. “Mr. Wayne, I understand that you have certain ideas about the two of them and their relationship. And I am not saying you are mistaken. But no, there was no kiss. I would have noticed. We're all keeping an eye out for that.” He paused. “Are you in the pool?”  
  
“Pool?”  
  
“Never mind. Batman spent most of his time picking glass out of the Joker's hair. He kept an eye on him. That's all.”  
  
Bruce deflated against the wall, tension sloughing off his shoulders. That corroborated the less embarrassing portion of Harley's account.  
  
“Now let me ask you a question. Is the Joker really in your house right now?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And he hasn't blown it up yet?”  
  
“He set the stove on fire.”  
  
“Hn.” There was a weight to that grunt, considering. Thoughtful. This was why Bruce didn't want to talk to Bane out of the cowl. The man was a lot smarter than appearances would have you believe, and he wasn't blinded by ego or willful ignorance like the others. “Good luck with the clown, Mr. Wayne. You will need it.”  
  
Did he ever.

 

After confirming with Alfred that the Joker hadn't moved, Bruce tromped down the stairs in pursuit of his harlequin intruder. Just as Alfred had said, Joker and Cassie were in the parlor they used to watch TV, Joker draped over the couch while Cassie perched on the arm of the chair across from it. The ladder and paint bucket were nowhere in sight.  
  
He took a deep breath and straightened his collar. Somehow, he had to get the Joker out of his house without getting himself or the hostages killed. Joker had a long memory for grudges and a short fuse. This would take some delicacy. Subtlety. He entered the room and cleared his throat, winning himself Joker's attention. Cassie did not budge.  
  
“There he is. Finally finished your business?” Joker asked.  
  
“I should hope so.” He positioned himself at the head of the couch, the TV behind him and Joker's whole body in clear view before him. The clown's empty hands were resting on his chest, neatly folded. The birdhouse sat on the floor, near Bruce's foot.  
  
“We're bonding,” Joker told him brightly. He gestured to the TV. “See? Already found an interest in common.”  
  
Bruce twisted around to glance at the screen. They had set the TV up to stream from youtube. He only looked for long enough to note the dancing figures and the title of the video (Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker) before putting his attention back where it belonged, on the most dangerous element in the room.  
  
“Cassie sure does love ballet. Never had much taste for it, myself,” Bruce said.  
  
Joker could not have looked more shocked and insulted if Bruce had told him his mother was a hyena. “You don't like ballet?” He rounded on Cassie, eyes popping, and hissed in a stage whisper: “He doesn't like _ballet_?”  
  
Cassie shook her head gravely.  
  
“It's not that there's anything wrong with it,” Bruce added quickly. “I just find it kind of boring, you know?”  
  
“Spoken like a man who's never watched it properly.”  
  
“I've been loads of times, I just don't--” He glanced at the screen again and fumbled his train of thought at the sight of the ballet troupe pole dancing around the candles on a giant wedding cake. “Don't...uh, I mean, it's an image thing, you know, everyone goes just so people can see you going and...uh, so you look cultured—does that man have ice cream hair?”  
  
“Never paid attention, or never went to the right performances,” Joker huffed, crossing his arms. “Tch! With all your billions of dollars, you could go see a show every night! And you're telling me you _don't like ballet._ Money really is wasted on the rich. Next you're going to tell me you don't like opera, either.”  
  
“Well...no---”  
  
“Gah!” Joker threw up his hands in the air. “That does it! It's about time people had a little more honest appreciation of culture in this city. As soon as I get back to my hideout I—”  
  
“Riddler called,” Bruce broke in, desperate to distract the clown before he ran off on a whole new twisted crime spree. “Sounds like he's losing interest in the war.”  
  
“War? Oh, that old thing. Fine, whatever, call it a truce or say that I won. It was getting boring. Typical of Eddie,” Joker said. His eyes had not lost that darting, intense look that always accompanied his scheming.  
  
This was going bad in a way Bruce hadn't anticipated.  
  
“He's going to tell your men where you are, so they'll probably be coming to get you.”  
  
“Brucie, dear, weren't you listening? I'm not leaving.” Midway through the statement, his perky tone fell to a warning growl.  
  
“Listen, I know what it looks like, you waking up in my bedroom and everything,” Bruce said. Joker waggled his eyebrows in reply. “I've checked the security footage and nothing actually happened. You don't have to worry about your virtue.” He had not checked the footage. He was honestly a little afraid of what he'd see.  
  
“How disappointing. What's the point of getting a billionaire playboy drunk if he won't even take you home and ravish you?” Joker's rolling eyes suddenly stopped, flicking back to look at Bruce as a thought occurred to him. “You have cameras in your bedroom? Oh, you kinky minx, you.”  
  
Bruce felt his cheeks heat. “For security purposes.”  
  
“Mm-hmmmm. I'm sure you delete the footage for every lady you bring home. Or maybe you don't? Do you have your own little amateur pornography business on the side? No wonder you're so rich.”  
  
Most of 'his ladies' didn't actually make it to his house. Bruce had become an expert in slipping out of trysts halfway through the night. The tabloids—and the Joker for that matter—didn't need to know about that.  
  
Bruce opened his mouth to reply and halted, reminded by a soft rustling to his side that Cassandra was still here. He had completely forgotten, and this conversation had just gotten a hundred times more mortifying for having taken place in front of her.  
  
She had just stood up from her perch. Her assessing eyes flicked from Bruce's red face to Joker's smug grin. Her stare lingered on the Joker, long enough that he looked back at her. Bruce wondered what she saw when she analyzed the clown, if she could actually decipher his conflicting signals, see his true intentions somewhere underneath his grinning face and theatrical movements. The Joker was not a stoic man, but that didn't make reading him any easier. To Bruce, he was like an open book written in wingdings.  
  
Cassie nodded to herself and slipped out of the room. Bruce ran a hand through his hair, annoyed that he had chased off his back up without meaning to, yet relieved by her departure all the same.  
  
“Isn't it great when the kids can take a hint?” Joker asked, his smile just this side of lascivious.  
  
Bruce frowned and crossed his arms.  
  
“You’re smiling again," he observed. "I heard you hadn't done that in months. Is it because of Batman?”  
  
“And why would you say that, Brucie baby? Did you think he stole my smile, maybe put it in his utility belt? Ha! I wouldn't put it past him.”  
  
“The Riddler seemed to think you were depressed because Batman always beat you.”  
  
“Oh, Eddie made the same mistake they always make. Just because I spend all my time trying to kill the Bat doesn’t mean I want him dead. Why should I care that I keep losing our games? Winning isn’t the point! Why it’s just like life—the destination  isn’t important. The real treasure is the friends we blow up along the way. Ha!”  
  
“So he was completely wrong about you.”  
  
"He usually is." Joker giggled. "He was right about one thing, though." He pushed himself up on his elbows and leaned up closer to Bruce. "I'm not really as insane as everyone thinks," he stage-whispered.  
  
"Really?" Bruce had his doubts about that.  
  
"Really. It's the rest of you that are crazy. What kind of sane, rational man wouldn't kill dozens of people just to get his crush to notice him?" Oh!" he broke off, dissolving into giggles. "Maybe Eddie's saner than I thought, after all," he gasped out between barks of laughter. "Hahahaha!"  
  
Bruce had long ago given up on putting a name to whatever the Joker had, though he had the clown's symptoms neatly cataloged in a spreadsheet with number ratings for how likely each one was to be part of a performance. Whatever the ailment was, it had manic swings and depressive ones, and the hills and valleys of Joker's mood didn't always match up to his behavior. Joker wanted the whole city to believe he was a manic tornado 24/7. Bruce had seen too many of his downs to believe that was true.  
  
"Ohh." Joker's laughing fit wound down into a puffing sigh, like a deflating balloon. "None of you ever get the joke. That's real insanity for you."  
  
“So what happens now?”  
  
“I'll let him down gently, I suppose. A light push off a 3 story building ought to do it. Heh. Poor old Eddie. He had to realize he never stood a chance, given who he was competing with.”  
  
“You mean that Harley woman?”  
  
Joker gave him the most eloquent “are you serious?” expression he had ever seen on anyone other than Cassie. Not for the first time, Bruce wondered why Harley had ever bothered. The Joker flopped over on to his back, hands pillowed behind his head.  
  
“You know,” he mused to the ceiling, “I remember the first time the Bat foiled my plans. I was so mad I could spit! All that work, all that planning, flushed down the drain because of some musclebound jerk dressed up like a flying rodent! And then he went and ruined my next plot, and the next one, and the one after that, over and over. Why, I couldn’t get anything done! Every time I turned around, old bat breath was there. If Eddie had come to me back then and offered a team-up...” he paused. “I might still have shot him. But I might not have. Who can say?” He broke off, cackling to himself.  
  
“So what changed?”  
  
“One night, I got the drop on old Batso. He didn’t even know I was there. Picture in your mind,” he splayed his hands out as if framing a photograph, “Him, me, a moonlit rooftop and a gleaming revolver. He was so busy brooding between the gargoyles he didn't hear me slip up behind him. All it would have taken was just one squeeze of the trigger and I could have splattered his brains all over the roof top.” Joker curled one hand into the mime of a gun, his eyes dreamy.  
  
In spite of himself, Bruce found his body leaning forward, focused and intent on the play of little expressions over that pointed, open face. The Joker was always a compelling speaker, and not just because of the danger he posed. It was one of his many theatrical talents, to draw any observer in to try and guess the direction of his thoughts, to predict the next turn of his speech. Bruce knew all the tricks and he still couldn’t help himself, he was hooked on the thin man’s story like a fish on a line.  
  
“One little bullet and that thorn would be out of my side forever. Finally, I would be able to wreak all the havoc I wanted. Kill whoever I pleased, without anyone to stop me. Imagine—a world without the Bat.” The Joker's dreamy expression crumpled into dark anger, and his voice lowered to a hiss. “The thought made me _sick._ I couldn’t bear it. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten why I wanted to kill all those people in the first place. Maybe there never had been a reason. But now, everything revolved around Batman. I couldn’t just destroy him, just like that.”  
  
“Too easy,” Bruce finished for him, though to Joker it might sound like a guess.  
  
“That's what I told myself.” The Joker shrugged. “But I’m older now, wiser. I can look back and tell exactly what that sick feeling really was.” His eyes had softened back into soft wistfulness.  
  
Bruce swallowed. Here was a terrible truth that he hated to admit, even to himself: that sick feeling, the _need_ which made the very idea of the other’s death completely abominable, he felt it, too. It had no name, and guilt followed on its heels like a lost dog. Countless times he had saved this man when he didn't have to, because of it. Had Joker found a name for the feeling that plagued them both?  
  
“And I’ve never eaten at that seafood joint again,” Joker finished, slamming his palm on the couch cushion. “Phew! You’d think you could get decent quality shellfish in a harbor town!” His mouth cracked up in a grin like he just couldn’t hold it in anymore.  
  
Just like that, the spell broke. Bruce shouldn't have expected anything less from that clown. There might have been a grain or two of truth in that story—maybe it was all true, and only the very end a lie, a retreat behind a joke. It was pointless to speculate.  
  
Something buzzed in the Joker's coat. He pulled out a slim purple smartphone and frowned at the screen.  
  
“Well! It's been fun, Brucie baby, but it looks like my ride is here.”  
  
The relief when Joker stood up, ready to leave of his own will, was like a clamp coming off his ribs. The clown was exhausting enough to be around when he had Kevlar armor plating and a belt full of emergency tools.  
  
“So many plans to make, so many bombs to build,” Joker mused. He scooped up his birdhouse, jumped to his feet and straightened his collar, as if the neatness of his upper half mattered when he still wasn't wearing any pants. “And no spilling to Batsy what I just told you.” Joker waggled a finger at him. “We have to keep him on his toes, you know. The game just doesn't have that same spark without that air of danger.”  
  
“Yeah. Sure,” Bruce said. Joker needn't have worried. A single lapse in murderous intent did not make the clown safe to engage, and Bruce knew that. He watched the Joker pass, turning slowly on one heel so he could keep his back away from the clown. “For what it's worth, I'm sure you make Batman sick too.”  
  
It was a throwaway line, a weak joke to take the final point. He did not expect the Joker to spin around and pin him with sudden, breathtaking intensity.  
  
“You really think so?” the Joker demanded, unsmiling.  
  
Were they still talking about an actual upset stomach? Bruce had completely lost the thread of this conversation.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Hm. I guess you would know.” Joker looked thoughtful for a moment before his beaming grin returned, back to its usual level of manic, sinister mirth. “Good thing I've got some new ideas for him.”  
  
Bruce watched the other man flounce to the door, unsettled deep in his gut without knowing why. This was a common experience when around the Joker.  
  
At the door, Joker paused, his fingers pressing almost sensually against the wall. He cast an eye over his shoulder, his smile small but knowing when he met Bruce's gaze.  
  
“See you later, darling,” he purred, and slipped out the door.

 

The words might as well have been a bolt from Mr. Freeze's ice gun. Bruce sat utterly still, staring out the empty doorway. In his ear, he dimly registered Alfred telling him that the Joker had left the property.  
  
That tone, that cadence, that pet name, it was a combination he only ever heard when he was wearing the cowl. Was it significant? Had Joker just deliberately shown his hand, thrown his aces on the table with a wink? A _“Yes of course I know, how could I not?”_  
  
The cant of that smile haunted him all the way to the kitchen. The Joker had really done a number on that room; there were pots, pans, and bottles scattered all over the floor, two heaping plates of pancakes and one of bacon on the counter, and dirty mixing bowls piled in the sink. The blender slumped to one side, its plastic half-eaten by the glowing green sludge inside it. Bruce dumped the gunk down the sink, wincing as it hissed and steamed. Hopefully it wouldn't damage the pipes.  
  
As for the mess on the floor, only Alfred would know where every item was supposed to go. Bruce was mostly checking for suspicious objects, wary that the Joker had hidden a surprise or two.  
  
He picked over that last conversation as he worked, turned it round in his head and examined it from every angle. So he and the Joker had...what? Confessed to mutual indigestion? Joker had reaffirmed once more that what he wanted was the game he played with Batman, not Batman's death. Maybe it wasn't such a disaster, if Joker knew who he was. The clown had made it clear he didn't care about Bruce Wayne. He was in it for the chase, not the catch.  
  
Little by little the many pots and pans found safer homes on the counter. Bruce set his phone to play the morning newsfeed and left it by the sink, listening for half an ear as he scrutinized every object for anything green or purple.  
  
_“...Klein's Klepto Emporium, one of the many thrift stores located downtown, reported an unusual break-in today. Security camera footage shows that around 3 am, two drunk men dressed up as Batman and the Joker broke in and took what the owner calls a very 'unique' birdhouse. The Batman impersonator, living up to the image of our caped crusader, left several 20 dollar bills on the counter in payment for the item...”_  
  
Bruce turned off the newsfeed.  
  
“I can take it from here, Master Bruce,” Alfred told him from the doorway.  
  
Bruce smiled up at him from the floor. “Thanks, Alfred. Sorry about the...” he waved an arm over the disaster around him. “I know the whole point of the evening was to keep the supervillains out of the manor.”  
  
“I suppose just one is better than ten,” Alfred said. He took a moment to scrutinize Bruce, his expression as placid and flat as it always was, giving away nothing. “If you're still intending to make your 2 o'clock meeting, sir, may I suggest a shirt with a higher collar?”  
  
Bruce blinked, patting absently at his neck. He picked up one of the shiny, stainless steel pans and held it up, checking his warped reflection. Right there, on the side of his throat, was a small red love bite, framed by a smear of dark red lipstick.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Epilogue the First

 

“So, your big secret sin is that you may or may not have sucked face with the Joker while you were plastered?” Selina asked, eyebrow cocked as she polished one of her nails. She was sitting at the hotel table, backlit by the moonlit window.

“He's a homicidal maniac, and there is a 90% chance that he knows my real identity,” Bruce reminded her.

“Add another to the list,” Selina muttered.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Hugo Strange, the Al Ghuls, almost the entire League of Assassins, Bane, me...” she shrugged. “It never seems to make a difference when someone new finds out, does it?”

“I wish you wouldn't be so flippant about this,” Bruce said, obviously riled that she wasn't validating the many years of brooding and guilt-wallowing he had spent over this memory. “He's a mass murderer, Selina.”

Selina threw her file down, apparently equally fed up. “How many people has Talia killed, Bruce?”

“That's not fair. That's completely different.”

“Because she gets paid for it? Or because she doesn't have mental illness as an excuse?”

“No, what—why are you defending the Joker?”

“I'm not, Bruce, really.” She sighed. “I just wish you could get over yourself sometimes. You'd be a lot happier if you could just accept the fact you have terrible taste in people. Myself included.”

“I do not have an attraction to the Joker.”

Selina rolled her eyes. “How's the water down there, pharaoh?”

“What?”

“Down in denial?”

“Don't be childish.”

They lapsed into sullen silence.

“I wish you'd told me about it sooner,” Selina said. “Could have saved some of us a lot of trouble. When was that night—April?”

“March. Why?”

“And it definitely happened before you two had your European vacation.” Selina smirked. “I guess I better tell Harley she won the betting pool.”

“The what.”

“I was so sure that one of these days he would steal a kiss while he had you tied to a chair. I guess he's got a gentlemanly streak hidden in there somewhere.”

_“Betting pool?”_

Selina smiled, not unlike a cliché turn of phrase involving cats and canaries.

“You were betting on when I—when Batman and the Joker would kiss. You and who else?”

“Oh, just some of the old gang. Penguin. Two-Face. Scarecrow. Bane. Not sure if the Riddler ever officially entered or not. He was really sour on the whole idea.”

Bruce hid his face in his hands, temporarily robbed of speech. Selina laid a comforting hand on his knee.

“Bruce, honey, you two are as obvious as the president's toupee. Of course we were going to notice.”

He made an inarticulate noise.

“Now if you could just get him into bed one of these days, he might even stop killing people.”

“Selina!”

 

* * *

 

Epilogue the Second

 

“You have. 5. New messages. First message, March 15th, 2: 22 AM.”

“Bruce what the hell. You think—you think you can just call me out of nowhere, drunk off your ass, and expect me to just drop whatever I'm doing and babysit you or some shit? I'm a legitimate crime fighter, Bruce, I have better things to do. Like foil that Black Mask drug shipment that you completely dropped the ball on, because you're too busy keeping your pet clown from shooting your pet...riddle leprechaun. Whatever.

Where even are you? I could have sworn I heard Harvey Dent singing in the background? Are you drunk with Two-Face. Is that the kind of life you live now. Whatever, just, whatever, I don't even want to talk to you.”

“Second message. March 15th, 2:35 AM.”

“What. The. FUCK. Why is the Joker there?! Why are you fucking drunk with the fucking Joker I can't even with you. And why did you give him your phone? He recognized me, Bruce! He knows my name now! Why do you—I can't. I can't! I'm never talking to you again.”

“Third message. March 15th, 3:50 AM.”

“BRUCE WHERE ARE YOU. I've torn through every karaoke joint within a 20 block radius of your stupid wine painting soiree thing and no one has seen you. You'd think a whole troupe of supervillains and a drunk Batman would be really hard to miss, but nooooo.

“I can't believe Alfred even let you leave the house with the batsuit when you're like this. Just. Pick up your goddamn phone and call me you mother fucker. And this time, don't give the phone to the fucking Joker!”

“Fourth Message. March 15th, 4:45 AM.”

“Goddammit Bruce. Call me. Please call me back. I finally found the right karaoke place—big surprise, it's the one with the goddamn window busted out—and they're already closed. Everyone is gone. Where are you? Did you make it home? Please call me.”

“Fifth Message. March 15th, 5: 37 AM”

The message opens with scrabbling noises, as if the person holding the phone were attempting to climb a brick wall.

"Ugh. Fucking. Security system. Bruce? I can't tell if you got home or not. I'm at the manor and no one is answering the door. Alfred--" A pause, filled with heavy breathing. "Alfred should have been down here now, even if he was asleep. I--fuck. Please, please tell me you did not bring the drunk villain squad home with you and now they've got Alfred tied up in the kitchen. Bruce I may actually kill you. Fucking--" A rock bounces off a distant window with a clink. "Wake up and answer me, Bruce!"

For half a minute there is only heavy breathing, punctuated with muttered cursing and rustling bushes. Crickets chirp in the background.

"Ugh. Fine. I'm done. I can't get in—Alfred better be okay. If anything happens to him because your stupid fucking. Ugh."

A loud bang from a large stone ricocheting off the front gate.

"Fuck!"

“End of messages.”

 

 

_> >>Alert: Access of the following files requires DNA scan and entry of three passcodes. Enter authorization requirements now._

_> >>Authorization accepted. Playing files._

_Footage from Camera 15, Master Bedroom, March 15th 5: 24 AM_

Two figures stagger in through the doorway. They fumble in the dark, impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends in the shadows. The two trip over a chair and land in a moonbeam, where one rolls up into a giggling ball while the other splays out on his back.

“This isn't the bed.”

“World's—hahaha! World's greatest—haha—detective!”

“Shhhhut up.”

The taller figure, which is Bruce wearing nothing but his cape, cowl, and underwear, sits up.

“Where'sh the lights?”

“Heeheeheewho needs them? Here--” the Joker staggers upright and immediately collapses across Bruce's broad shoulders, latching on like a large purple stickbug. “Here—the bed's this way.” He attempts to haul Bruce upright, loses his grip and lands flat on his bottom. He seems to find this hilarious.

Bruce gets himself up, swaying in place as if he were on a ship deck.

“Where?”

“Over here, you big lummox.” The Joker climbs up Bruce's body, nearly sending them both to the floor, and then he's pulling him over to the bed. They land in a heap on the foot of the king mattress and don't move for a while.

“Lotsa spiders in here,” Bruce observes.

“No there aren't. You, you're drunk.”

“'M not drunk. I'm Batman.” He says this with great conviction.

The Joker finds this hysterical, too.

“M'legs are still on the floor,” Bruce complains.

“Then get up here. Water'sh fine.”

Joker inches up the bed, attempting to pull Bruce with him. He has as much success as a puppy trying to pull a horse. Eventually Bruce rolls over on his own, pinning Joker beneath him. All that is visible from the camera now is Bruce's back, mostly covered by cape.

“I like thish dance better,” Bruce mumbles.

“Hm?”

“It's more fun.”

“No hives?” a pale white hand appears beside Bruce's head, poking at the cowl. “Thought you were—allershic. To fun.”

Silence. Bruce's head dips down. The white hand seizes up, then slowly lowers out of view. It's like this for a few minutes, the small movements of the two impossible to make out in the dim light.

“OW.” Bruce jumps back. “What wish that?”

“No no, ish, it's sexy. Saw it on the internet.”

“You bit my head.”

“You're shupposed to. You. 'Undress your partner wish your teeth.'”

They turn over on their sides. A splash of moonlight perfectly illuminates the look of baffled terror on Bruce's face as the Joker attempts to chew the cowl off of him.

“I don't—thish isn't sexy. Just—hands. Use hands.” Bruce demonstrates this by trying to remove the Joker's pants. This is apparently very difficult when one is both drunk and has a clown gnawing on your head.

The Joker stops moving. A soft snore escapes him, muffled by the rubber between his teeth. Bruce tosses the pants off the bed, and pokes the other man. The clown does not stir.

Bruce huffs, peeling the Joker off of himself. The ear of his cowl is dangling by a thread, and there are large holes where his flesh is visible through the rubber. He strips the last of his costume off, tossing it to the floor. For a while he just sits, watching the other man sleep. Then he gathers the clown in his arms and carries him out of the view of the camera, into the bathroom.

A short time later Bruce returns, now empty handed. He attempts to sit down on the bed, misses, and lands on top of Joker's pants. These he examines for a few seconds before appearing to panic and, after grabbing the garment and his own cape, throws them out the open window.

Bruce gets himself back on the bed after a few more failed attempts. He grabs a pad from the bedside table and appears to write something, slowly, with great concentration. Work finished, he nods to himself, and falls backwards on to the bed. He does not get up again, apparently asleep.

 

_End of archived footage._

 

**Author's Note:**

> The birdhouse is real, by the way. I have photo evidence.


End file.
